Parvin Eslami; Gholamreza Manshaee; Zahra Hajebrahimi
Volume 4, Issue 13 , February 2014, , Pages 43-62
Abstract
Aviophobia is a common debilitating fear of flying with millions of people being impacted by it around the world. The present study aimed to examine effectiveness of virtual reality exposure therapy in alleviating fear of flying in patients with aviophobia. The study followed an empirical method with ...
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Aviophobia is a common debilitating fear of flying with millions of people being impacted by it around the world. The present study aimed to examine effectiveness of virtual reality exposure therapy in alleviating fear of flying in patients with aviophobia. The study followed an empirical method with pretest, posttest and a control group. The statistical society consisted of 40 individuals with aviophobia who had been referred to Tehran Aerospace Research Institute by counseling centers and by Tehran Mehrabad Airport. Twenty patients were selected using random sampling and divided into an experimental (9 females and 1 male) and a control (10 females) group. The experimental group received ten individual 20-minute sessions of virtual reality exposure therapy over five weeks. The Aviophobia questionnaire was administered both before and after the intervention in both the experimental and the control groups. The data were analyzed using Covariance analysis and two-way ANOVA. Results indicated that the virtual reality therapeutic method had a significant effect in alleviating fear of flying. Results of the follow-up examination showed that the effect still lasted in two months. The study suggests that a virtual reality exposure therapy can have significant, reliable and sustaining effects on alleviating fear of flying
